Wouldn't variants like this be super cost effective at a time when sales are down?

It wasn't about cost-effectiveness so much as it was about scheduling and timing. This was their Q&A answer when Jesse asked them about it in April/May:

Multiple headsculpts are a great way to make the maskless troopers have some variety, as evidenced by the upcoming Hoth Rebel Soldier... Is this something Hasbro will make more "standard" with army builders such as Rebels, Bespin Guards, Naboo military, and other non-clone type soldiers? It's a great feature and definite encouragement for army building.

We like to see variety, but we probably will be doing fewer of the "running change" type figures since it causes extraordinary difficulties in our system. More likely we will look to do head sculpt changes and release alternate versions in some other way, either as candidates for "repaint waves" (should we ever need those again), or Battle Packs.

CRAP! Your right, I misread that one. I would have preferred they make one up. He was not even in this movie. They should have made the Hoth Orange Droid from the old TRU pack who was at Echo Base.[/quote]

I am happy we are getting 3 Bespin Guard variants, especially the vintage black guard. They look good IMO. I finally see where they got the winter design for Captain Rex in that Clone Wars episode from last year. At first I thought the concept figure was for that Rex. Yeah, I am looking forward to most of the wave. Finally a Snowspeeder Luke!

I really wish more people were publicly giving credit to Scott, where it's due. I've seen some images, and they're worded "the figure you thought would never happen", and such. Well... a nod to the guy that ultimately got it made would be nice.

Just my opinion.

I'm geeked to see the Bespin Guards including an alien (very cool). Is it 3 headsculpts? I missed the facts on this one.

I love Snowspeeder Luke, but his "hook" was a magnet thing, so that accessory looks suspect. Not a huge issue though to me, just something I noticed.

Concept IG-88 is freakishly cool to me.

Concept Snowtrooper is slightly disappointing. Why not a concept Hoth Rebel to go with the Snowtrooper we already have? It's cool looking, but I just wish we'd gotten the rebel, which would've been a nice match.

Zuckuss... Outstanding and much needed.

Droids... i don't get what we're actually getting here, haha. R2-X2 we already have though, no?

I really wish more people were publicly giving credit to Scott, where it's due. I've seen some images, and they're worded "the figure you thought would never happen", and such. Well... a nod to the guy that ultimately got it made would be nice.

Agreed. I will say that I was reading through a wrap-up at JTA today, and they mentioned both JD and Scott by name in their recap of this wave - which was nice to see.

I was just looking over the Hasbro Poster and the Powerpoint slides and it appears R2-X2 is a very dark green and not a straight black repack of the EE one. While this is not groundbreaking news I found it to be somewhat good news having to buy this figure again to complete the BAD. He is different enough to make it OK.....in my mind.